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The Park | Saturday Afternoon

It was a little cool and rainy to be playing in a park, but it wasn't anything Irene wasn't used to, anyway. And while it could be fun to play alone and unsupervised, one could only climb up into so many trees and pretend one was a spy or Robin Hood so many times until one got hungry.

She'd found a loaf of bread in the flat she'd woken up in this morning, and after smearing a pair of slices with jam and eating them herself, she'd hauled the loaf back out to the duck pond she'd noticed earlier, and was now tearing little pieces of bread off to throw gently towards the ducks.

She was persistently trying to get the flamingos interested, too, and wondered if she might be able to befriend one as a pet. Or a croquet mallet, like in Alice in Wonderland. (Never mind that she didn't have an especially firm grasp on the rules of croquet; hadn't much seemed like the Queen of Hearts had, either.)

[opennnnn]

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The morning had been quite busy and even an energetic 8 year old needs a break now and then from adventuring. So Dwight had found himself at a park and decided that was as good a place as any to hang out for a bit, especially since his father still didnt seem to be anywhere around.

So he had found a rather cool looking tree and had climbed up into the branches where he was relaxing, watching the ducks and flamingos and anyone who happened to be in the area.

He had watched the dark haired girl walk over and start feeding the ducks. He watched her for a moment as she tried to coax the flamingos over.

"I don't know if flamingos like bread" offered helpfully from his perk in the tree she was standing next to.

Irene glanced around for the source of the voice for just a moment before she spotted Dwight, still holding a piece of bread in one hand.

"How do you know?" she challenged. "What do they like, then?"

The ducks loved bread! And the pigeons at home did, too, but she wasn't really supposed to feed them because they were something called a nuisance.

"Well, they don't seem very interested in it" Dwight retorted. He looked over at the flamingos a moment then turned back to look down at Irene. "They probably want fish or snails or something. They seem more interested in what's along the water's edge there" he said with a nod of his head.

An idea popped into his head and he grinned. "Oh maybe there are frog eggs or something they are trying to get at!" he exclaimed as he swung his legs over the branch and jumped down with a light thud.

"Wanna go take a look?"

"Frogs' eggs sound gross," Irene observed, though it was less of an objection than it sounded like. She was sort of interested. Just primly so. "You think flamingos eat frogs' eggs?"

Doubtful, Dwight. They were pink and adorable. No way they ate something that gross.

"Well, they are birds... birds eat all kinds of things" Dwight said with a shrug. "Ya gonna come look or not?" he asked as he started towards the edge of the water, giving a look over his shoulder back at Irene, before heading off.

Irene had been just behind him, so that earned him a little huff and a roll of her eyes. "I'm coming." She just thought it was gross, okay. She wasn't uninterested.

"The birds I know don't eat all kinds of things," she added sniffily. "Maybe these are American flamingos."

Well, they were, but British flamingos would also be totally uninterested in breadcrumbs.

Dwight gave a slight grin and ran to the edge of the lake. He picked up a stick and started poking at the mud and water. He had spend many an afternoon poking around in the woods and rivers and lakes back home. So he was totally in his element right now, and barely noticing the mud splash that was now on his cheek.

Meanwhile, Irene was almost as prissy at nine as she was at thirty-two, and definitely a lot more squeamish.

But she also wanted to know things. All the things. Everything. Even if it involved mud and frogs.

"Careful," she said, edging up to the water on her tiptoes as though something might come out and get her. "You've got mud on you already."

Dwight shrugged and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, which really did nothing more than smear the mud around more.

"Don't see any frogs.... but there are a lot of minnows and I see tadpoles I think over there" he said, leaning out a little farther over the water to try and get a better look.

"Tadpoles are frogs," she told him bossily, as though he might not know.

But Irene did. She'd read it in a book.

"What's a minnow?" she asked, leaning in to peer at the water.

"Tadpoles are baby frogs" Dwight corrected with a slight eye roll. "And you don't know what minnows are???" he half questioned half mocked. "They are tiny fish that live in still bodies of water. Lots of things eat them... turtles, birds, other fish..."

Dwight glanced over at her and shook his head with a smirk. "Obviously a city kid. What's your name?"

Irene narrowed her eyes at him, because yes, of course she was a city kid, so why in the world would she know what a minnow was?

And she wasn't really in the mood to argue with this strange boy, but baby things were still those things, if you asked her, so tadpoles were frogs.

(Sometimes Irene's parents suggested she should go into law as an adult, and while Irene didn't much fancy the idea of wearing one of those wigs, she did like coming up with arguments for why other people were wrong!)

"I'm Irene," she said after a moment, pulling herself up with rigid, prim posture. "And yes, I'm from London, which is the greatest city in the whole world, and we don't have minnows there."

"Dwight" he said simply, not really caring too much about the rest of that stuff... it sounded boring. In the city all you could do was walk around and stare at ugly buildings. It was much better being out in the woods and splashing in creeks and swimming in the lake. That much he was sure of.

"And minnows are really cool" he said with an affirming nod and then looked at the empty cup he in his hand from his ~~handwavey~~ adventures earlier and grinned. "Here let me show you!" he said excitedly as he took the cup and held it out over the water, leaning out a little farther to try and scoop up some of the tiny fish.

Cities had people. And people, in Irene's opinion, were the most fascinating animals of all.

But minnows were still interesting, even if she was also a little wary of what he was doing.

"You're going to fall in," she noted, not exactly trying to dissuade or warn him so much as just wanting to say it before it happened. (Then she would get to be right, and an 'I told you so' was one of the best things in life, she was sure.)

Dwight was about to tell her to stop distracting him and let him focus. He leaned out just a little farther, gripping one of the little branches of a scraggly bush growing at the water's edge.

"Almost... got them...." he said, straining a little as he tried to reach just a little farther and then dipped the cup into the water.

Just then he heard a snap as the branch he was bolding broke and he went falling into the pond. A couple of seconds later he was popping up, soaking wet and absolutely muddy. But he was still clutching the cup. He looked in and grinned as he held it up triumphantly.

"Got them!" he called out with a huge smile, totally unphased about the state he was in. Wasn't the first time he had fallen head long into a lake or stream.

"I told you you'd fall in!" Okay, that was out of the way, and it was delightful to say -- but Irene was stifling a very unladylike snorting giggle at the state he was in. "You're going to catch a cold now!"

But that wasn't preventing Irene from trying to daintily pick her way over to peek in the cup, all the same.

Dwight stood up and made his way through the knee deep water and slogged his way back over to where Irene was. He made at first like he wasn't going to show her but then held the cup out for her to see with a grin.

"Are you going to keep them?" Irene wondered, peering into the cup. Her tone was half reproachful, half curious.

"Naw... they wouldn't survive in a the cup and I don't have a tank or anything" Dwight said simply, though a little disappointed because he wouldn't deny that could be cool. "I'll put them back in a little bit so they can have the whole lake to swim in."

"We might have these in the city," Irene decided. "I have seen a pond before, I've just not waded in to see if there's little fish in there. But ours have swans."

Minnows, it turned out, were interesting. Perhaps worth wading into ponds for.

She would need to go fetch her wellies, though.

"Pretty much any body of water that last any length of time will likely have minnows or something similar in it" Dwight said simply, not at all trying to be condescending. "A lot of times you can lure them to the surface so they are easier to see with bread. So shouldn't be too hard to look for them when you get back home.... in London ....wherever that is."

Edited 2021-11-14 16:20 (UTC)

Jon was similarly unbothered by the weather, but was cautious around people, especially other kids.

Nevertheless, he crept a little closer. "Are those...flamingos?" he asked tentatively. He'd never seen one live before!

"I think so," Irene said, glancing over at the boy before tossing more bread for the ducks to fight over and looking longingly over at the flamingos. "Certainly look like the flamingos at the zoo."

But at a zoo there was usually a little plaque that said whether they were flamingos, and Irene hated to be wrong.

"I've never been to the zoo," Jon confessed, still quiet. "I, um. I think they're pretty."

Irene considered that answer and what it might mean. Maybe the boy was poor. Maybe he was ill and couldn't leave the house often. Maybe there simply wasn't a zoo near his home.

In any case, while her mind presented solutions to why someone might not have ever been to the zoo, she decided the answer was the same no matter what the reason: be nice to him.

"Want to feed the ducks?" she offered, holding out her bread. "The flamingos don't seem interested, but the ducks love bread."

Mostly the latter, and also the fact his grandma didn't want to try to wrangle Jon at such a big place.

Jon bit his lip. He came a little closer, reaching out for the bread, but didn't take it yet. "Are you sure?"

Edited 2021-11-14 04:43 (UTC)

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The Park | Saturday Afternoon

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